What is the profile of internationally mobile students?

Many factors at the individual, institutional, national and global levels drive patterns of international student mobility. These include personal ambitions and aspirations for better employment prospects, a lack of high-quality higher educational institutions at home, the capacity of higher education institutions abroad to attract talent and government policies to encourage cross-border mobility for education (Bhandari, Robles and Farrugia, 2020[12]). The needs of increasingly knowledge-based and innovation-driven economies have increased the global demand for tertiary education, while increasing wealth in emerging economies has prompted the children of the growing middle classes to seek educational opportunities abroad. Simultaneously, economic (e.g. costs of international flights), technological (e.g. the spread of the Internet and social media enabling contacts to be maintained across borders) and cultural factors (e.g. use of English as a common working and teaching language) have contributed to rendering international study substantially more affordable and accessible than it was previously.